Unwritten Rules and Robots

By Tom Lichtenberg

Three Short Novels

Renegade Robot:
It's the end of the world as we know it, when the dreaded Singularity finally occurs and happens to be captured, live on tape, by agents of the Frantic News Network, which freaks out, as usual, and causes a lot of trouble for the mild-mannered nanobot exterminator who happens to get caught in the crossfire

Unwritten Rules of Impossible Things:
What if someone - or something - stole one of your days? Just one, and you didn't know why, or what they had done with your life in that time? Young Philip Galvez and his friend Marcus Holmes found out for themselves when they decided to discover why there was a giant stuffed moose in a house down the road.

The New Guy in Moon Base Twelve:
They weren't exactly the crew the President had in mind when he announced his plan to build a permanent base on the moon so the Chinese wouldn't do it first, but there they were, a boring collection of peaceful, happy settlers who couldn't even get a decent reality TV show rating. Life was perfectly dull until the new guy arrived. Now if they could only find out who he was and where he'd come from.

• Language: English
• Publisher: XinXii
• Release date: May 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9783957031396

Book preview

Unwritten Rules & Robots

Three Short Novels

By Tom Lichtenberg

Copyright 2010-2012

by Tom Lichtenberg

All Rights Reserved

Contact: [e-mail]

ISBN: 978-3-9570-3139-6

Verlag GD Publishing Ltd. & Co KG

E-Book Distribution: XinXii

www.xinxii.com

This ebook, including all its parts, is protected by copyright and must not be copied, reselled or shared without the permission of the author.

Contents

Renegade Robot

Unwritten Rules of Impossible Things

The New Guy in Moon Base Twelve

Renegade Robot

One

Life is no argument, for the conditions of life could include error - F. Nietzsche

It was no job for a superhero, but Wyatt Lorenzo knew what he was signing up for, so even when people began to taunt him with names like Jani-Tor and Scrub-Or, he just laughed and shrugged it off. Someone had to take care of the 'do-gooders' before it was too late. He liked to blame it all on his virtual best friend, the one who was forever texting him into doing things he did not want to do, from phoning Jan Johnson in the eighth grade, to pulling a certain stunt on a certain day in high school, to taking this job with his actual best friend, Jalopy, and so he had followed the call of the text and it had led him to this day, where he found himself, in his mid-twenties already, a gainfully employed Botnik in the service of Mankind, living alone on the outskirts of Rubble Land, doing his part to stem the tide of correction.

Wyatt had discovered the neighborhood while on a mission with his team to clean out some rampaging CGB’s (concrete gobbler bots). These little guys, shaped like fat gray packing tubes about nine inches high and five inches thick, with pairs of extensible claws reaching out of the top and bottom and a thin slit down the middle on one side, were designed to break down buildings of concrete, glass and steel, excreting nothing but nitrogen-rich soil and oxygen. Once you discover them it's usually too late to save their target building, but they're fairly docile and easily dismantled. A little Cherry Coke goes a long way towards their final deactivation. Wyatt could’ve wished they'd let the little buggers do a little more damage before they'd completely neutralized the infestation; as it was, the locale was still littered with wreckage-filled lots only partially consumed. Still, the rents were cheap and the remaining structures were relatively safe, for the moment.

Two of the team weren't very respectful to Wyatt; Randy, the team leader, and Hazel, his right-hand man. They'd been doing this work since the early days of the first hints there might be a problem with the self-generating helpbots originally designed by Western Lightwave. Randy especially liked to claim he'd seen it coming all along, proof positive to him that nothing good ever came out of California. He was a short, fat loudmouth from The South who sported a sweaty fu manchu mustache and a prized Esso t-shirt most days of the week. His compadre Hazel was equally matched in stature and stoutness, and did her best to keep up with his vocal volume as well. A lot of people assumed they were married or siblings or both, but nobody knew for sure. They would come screaming up in the liquid-deathmobile first thing before sunrise, hoses clanging and dangling off every side of the bright blue tanker truck, blaring the horn and broadcasting to the whole block that 'lazy bones lorenzo better get his scrawny ass in gear or it was gonna cost him sure enough'. More times than not, Wyatt made sure he was out there on the remains of the sidewalk before they could pull that stunt.

The final member of the team was his impossibly tall skinny friend, Jalopy. With his six foot nine inch bony frame, his pink shades, camouflage coat, khaki shorts and high top sneakers, he was the opposite of incognito. Jalopy was surprisingly quiet, though. You had to listen closely to pick up any of his conversational tidbits. So it was mostly Randy and Hazel making all the noise as the tanker patrolled its officially suspect areas five days a week from dawn till noon. The team was tasked with the easement, as they called it, of any reprobate or otherwise retrograde Class A, B or C type IMA’s (intelligent mechanical assistants). It was everything a morbid cynic could dream of. Unfortunately for him, Wyatt was neither. He was merely a dreamer and a drifter who found himself wherever he happened to go. Jalopy was like that, too, and both also shared an ability to take orders and follow instructions, and so the team generally functioned well enough. The two leaders sat up front in the cab, amusing each other by mocking the two followers, who clung to the back like garbage men, enjoying the wind in their hair and the thrill of life in the great outdoors. Wyatt and Jalopy, when they mutually emerged from their daydreams simultaneously, would sometimes flash the goofiest grins at each other and laugh like maniacs.

Two

It was a Tuesday in October, and Wyatt knew he should be thinking about the frantic phone call he'd received from his big sister the night before, but he'd managed to sleep too well after finally hanging up the phone, and now there was Randy out on the street making such a racket he had to get out there in a hurry, so he rolled out of bed, grabbed his shoes and ran out the door barefoot.

Come on, Randy, he shouted, Give a guy a break, man

Gave you a break when I let you on this team, Randy yelled back, Now get your skinny ass on the back of this here truck. Got a big day ahead of us. Real big day.

Wyatt barely managed to push his feet into his shoes before clambering up the side of the tanker, and then was nearly pitched off by the sudden lurch as Randy floored it, roaring off down the street to the accompanying cackles of Hazel and himself. Jalopy was already ensconced on his edge of the vehicle, and just made that annoying clicking noise he always did, and shook his head. He said something, but Wyatt couldn't hear what it was. He didn't want to shout what did you say? because he knew from experience that it wouldn't do any good. He'd have to wait until a rare moment of relative silence and then try to get it out of him again.

The tanker barreled ahead through Rubble Land, twenty square blocks of former suburban sprawl, now reduced to occasional dwellings amidst the remains of dull one-story office parks and strip malls. The CGB's had spread out nicely when they first laid siege to this terrain, almost as if they'd had a plan. Wyatt knew they didn't operate like that, but here they managed to occupy several lots at once, rather than their usual grazing pattern. There had been a lot of them in the pack, that was all. It took a lot of soda pop to wear them out that time. Wyatt imagined he could still smell the bubbles.

While riding along, he textually checked in with Bilj Bjurnjurd, his virtual friend. One of the things he liked about Bilj was that he could talk to him anytime, under any conditions, wind, rain, cold, noise, whatever. Bilj was almost always available. Wyatt could speak or text and the words would go through his wristband halfway around the planet where they would appear in some form to Bilj. On his end, Bilj's words came through the band and from there directly into his mind. Sometimes Bilj didn't have much to say. This morning, he had no answers to Wyatt's question; what was so big about the day, as Randy claimed.

Probably just a bunch of 'sanders', Bilj suggested. Wyatt nodded. It was possible. Randy was known to be fixated on those particular artifacts. They were often difficult to isolate amid all the sawdust they created and lived on, and they had to be isolated, otherwise their reduction would cause a rather flammable chain reaction. They would have to break out the sifters and get on their hands and knees. It was a dusty and dull assignment. Wyatt hoped it wouldn't be that, and when the tanker turned up Verona Street and headed north, he got the feeling it wasn't. Sanders weren't typically found in that direction, where the buildings were mainly brick and mortar. But then they turned again, and approached the former Lake Wilhelm. If it was the lake, it could be anything. All known mechanisms seemed to appreciate that meadow, with its tall, spreading reeds and plentiful wildlife. Bots had a weakness for non-human species, and liked to be near them, to enjoy their presence.

His guess was right. Randy pulled in right at Lakefront, where they used to rent canoes and paddle-boats and sell every kind of junk food. All of that was a mound of dirt now with sunflowers poking out all over. Hazel whipped out her machete and cut the stalks down. Sunflowers were a dead giveaway.

We're out to find a snake, boys, Randy hollered as he leaped out the driver's side and grabbed a big red canister from the side of the tanker. Jalopy and Wyatt nodded and hopped down also. Each grabbed his own colored 'distinguisher' from where they hung next to the railings, Jalopy's purple and Wyatt's green. Hazel had her gold one slung across her back already, with the nozzle out and the dial set to high. She led the way through the meadow, kicking at every kind of plant along the way. Hazel had a thing about vegetation, am abiding scorn and hatred she made no attempt to hide.

Freaking foliage, she shouted, Get out of my life, you damn green maggots!

We ain't come for the weeds, Randy reminded her, but quietly. He didn't aim to get on her wrong side this early in the hunt. Wyatt didn't bother to ask why the leaders were so certain they'd find a snake out here. Previous attempts in the same location hadn't turned one up. It seemed that every month or so Randy got it up his sleeve that there was one out here. He always said it was government orders, and even showed some paperwork now and then to back up the claim. He'd get awful sore when they turned up nothing, not even a scraper or a mole. The team had quotas and it seemed to Wyatt that whenever they were ahead of the game, Randy'd go all snake, as if he could afford the wasted effort. Of course, if they did get lucky, they'd be golden. Nothing was more valuable to catch. Those suckers were for keeps, too. No early retirement for them. They'd be handed over to the zoo for further study. The zoo already had a couple, and claimed to learn of miracles through them.

Everyone was always looking for the master plan. Wyatt didn't think there was one, and neither did Bilj. A lot of people believed that Western Lightwave had a hidden agenda. It couldn't just be plain old bad luck! Now was no time for wondering, though, not with Randy and Hazel yelling in the wild, and Jalopy letting him know they ought to team up, pair up just in case, one go wide and one go short. Snakes were not just rare, but allegedly deadly. They were said to have the ability to evaporate a man completely in less than twenty seconds. Wyatt knew he ought to be nervous, but he wasn't. Bilj had already informed him that there was no snake in the lake. Not now, not ever, and Bilj had never been wrong about fauna.

Three

Strolling through the meadow on that uncommonly warm autumn morning was enough to lull Wyatt into a walking daydream. Naturally, he was thinking about her. Her image sprang to his mind as easily as a baby cries. He saw her lean, angular body, her soft brown skin, those sharp clear eyes sparking out from under the wide red headband that kept her black curly hair away from her face. He saw those dark green batwing tattoos curling around her skinny arms. He did not know her name, not her real name, at least. He had seen her, in the flesh, only once, and that was a long time ago, in a park, in a crowd, surrounded by her friends and family. He could never forget that face or the joy that spread across it when the music began. Of course he did not go up to her, did not say hello, did not introduce himself, did not ever see her again. It was enough to conjure the picture up in his mind, as he'd done so many times, over so many years. Always it was her smile and the eyes lighting up as she looked at him in his mind. He didn't need to think as he imagined this encounter while ostensibly patrolling for civilization-endangering mechanical threats. He would have remained in that reverie indefinitely, but Jalopy snapped him out of it with a tap on the shoulder and a gesture, pointing down.

There, at the foot of a scrubby bush, was a micro-bot unlike any either of them had ever seen. It was no more than four inches tall, and walked on bent back legs and long front arms like a gorilla. Its shaggy green head was ape-like also, containing bright wide eyes and a wide flat mouth. Numerous folds, like pockets, covered its head and torso. The bot had stopped moving and stood unblinking in the shade of the shrub.

Well hello, little buddy, Jalopy whispered. Wyatt understood why. Neither of them was eager to announce this discovery to their leaders. Randy and Hazel would have stomped it to smithereens, no questions asked. They were never curious, only murderous. The creature gave no sign it had heard him. Jalopy took a small step closer, and slowly lowered himself onto his haunches. He repeated his friendly greeting. After a moment, it opened its mouth and quietly emitted a tiny printout, like a miniature fortune cookie. Jalopy pulled it out and read, 'Please Do Not Disturb. Butterfly Restoration In Progress'.

Jalopy glanced over at Wyatt, who nodded. They did not need to discuss such things to know they were in agreement. Jalopy smiled and looked back down. He said

We won't bother you, but you ought to know, we're botniks and ...

He didn't finish the sentence as the creature had suddenly vanished.

That'll do it, Wyatt chuckled, they'll all be underground now.

They knew it from experience. Once one bot was alerted to danger, every bot in the area seemed to know instantaneously. This was one of the reasons why their work was sometimes difficult. Half of the enemy were nearly invisible, the rest almost seemed to be shape shifters, re-structuring and re-manufacturing themselves continually. Wyatt did not know anyone who truly understood what was happening. There were plenty of rumors, of course, and a lot of misinformation, for sure. If everything he'd heard was true,